Prelude to a Subject
by theseeker64
Summary: On a night more than twenty years before the events of the first Mass Effect, a father makes a decision that will alter the course of history, and change one child's life forever. Oneshot.


Paul yelped as the cigarette burned his knuckles. He grit his teeth and tossed the thing out the window to drown in the gathering puddles of rain water outside. Flipping the hand around, he narrowed his eyes on the reddened skin the burn had left, but his vision soon drifted past the wound and back to the crib he'd been staring at; the reason he'd so absentmindedly injured his hand in the first place. His three-year-old daughter was peering out at him, smiling, and the expression managed to both quell his anger and soothe his wound at the same time. He made himself return the gesture, rose, and went to her.

She was light in his arms, and when he pulled her to his chest and rubbed his nose along her brow, she giggled; the soft, sweet, sound of true innocence. He hushed her and gently pushed her head to his chest. Outside, beyond the rain-streaked window, a crack of thunder sounded from Eden Prime's dark skies, painting them briefly in a muted shade of yellow, and Paul lifted his wrist to check the time.

"Daddy?" His daughter croaked, turning to look of the window herself.

"Yes?"

"We go?"

"...yes, sweetheart," he said. _Don't let her see you cry, _he commanded, raising a fist to his cheek and pressing it against his eye, as if to _physically _stop any rogue tears threatening escape.

He moved to the bedroom door and peaked in. His wife was a still and shadowed lump upon the mattress, but after a moment, a fit of coughs took her, as they were wont to do these days, and she groaned. "Kate?" He called softly to her, but if she'd heard, she made no attempt to answer him. He closed the door.

"Mommy…" His daughter whispered and Paul found himself hushing her again to stave off the child's whimpering.

"Mommy's going to get better now," he told her. "All better."

He wrapped them both in a big, heavy, cloak, tucking the folds and edges around his daughter's little frame to keep her dry before pulling a hood over his head. When the front door was opened, the harsh sounds of the storm filled the room, bringing with it a cold, bitter, wind that sent his daughter's brown hair swirling around her face. Paul pulled her tighter to his chest and stepped into the storm, closing shut the door behind him, and closing shut the last chance he had to turn back along with it.

The dirt beneath the grass path that twisted around Eden Prime's various buildings and facilities had turned to mud, and the thick stuff sludged up around his boots as he walked, sucking at the soles as if trying to hold him in place. _As if trying to stop you from making this mistake, _he thought, but if he dwelled upon _that _notion, it would be enough to drive him mad. He cast the thought aside and marched on.

Thunder growled overhead as the rain sloshed down around the two of them, all bundled up in their cloak. His daughter was, thankfully, silent for the trip. If she'd started crying… Paul didn't want to think about what someone might say if they saw him with her.

He ascended a big grass hill behind the planet's medical facility, and when he'd reached its apex, he saw the ship waiting for him across the plains: a small, dark, thing with a half-dozen group of small, dark, figures gathered around it. Paul pulled a deep breath of air, tasting rainwater on his tongue, and stilled his nerves. _You're doing what's right for Kate. That's all that matters,_ he told himself. _All that matters. Make your feet move. Now. _They did, and when the party across the plains saw him coming, they moved forth to intercept.

They met in the belly of the valley, where the rain had pooled thickest into the planet's soil, leaving them to face each other in a pit of mud. Paul pulled the hood from his cloak and faced each of them in turn. They were cloaked as well, their faces shadowed and hidden beneath hoods, but they did not return the gesture of removing them, choosing instead to keep themselves faceless.

For awhile, neither party talked, only the soft pattering of rain around them and the occasional grumble of thunder overhead breaking the silence. Then, Paul took another breath and said, "Are you them? Them… Cerberus fellows?"

"We are, sir," one answered.

"And if it is alright with you, we'd rather not waste anymore time soaking our feet out here in this God-awful weather." Another added; both voices were male and quiet and-to Paul-ominous.

Paul nodded. "Well… this is my daughter," he said, pulling the cloak back a bit so that his daughter could peek out at the group. Her eyes were pretty and wide and carried a cautious curiosity within that Paul thought was wise years beyond her age. She looked to each of the hooded strangers in turn before facing him again and swiping rain from her cheeks. _Or are they tears? _A voice within him asked, but Paul silenced it immediately.

"You understand, sir, that we cannot simply take your word on her… _abilities_," one of the men said. "We need to see them."

"I understand," he answered. He held his daughter's eyes and forced a smile that felt so foreign upon his face, he doubted if it looked even half-sincere. "Baby… can you do your trick for these men?"

His daughter nodded. If she'd _meant _to look as brave as she had in that moment, Paul thought she was stronger than he'd ever been… or ever be. His eyes flicked to a patch of mud near the Cerberus men's feet. A loose cluster of rocks were dotting the slimy surface. Paul pointed at a large one near the center and turned so his daughter's eyes could follow the trail of his finger. When she found the rock, she lifted her own hand-_God, it's so small, _Paul thought, looking at her little fingers extending as his heart broke-and closed her eyes.

For a moment, nothing happened, and Paul could _feel _the men's patience draining as the rain poured down upon them. Then, the rock was wrapped in a soft, blue, glow, as if held in a ball of luminescent water. It jerked upwards near their chests, twisted, and launched off over the hill with such velocity, Paul could hear the air around it distorting.

The Cerberus men turned their hooded heads back on Paul and his daughter, and though Paul could not see the faces beneath, he knew the mouth-gaping expressions of awe they were almost certainly wearing. He'd seen the very same one upon his wife before standing had grown too painful and she'd become bed-ridden.

"...impossible," one hissed.

"Three years old? With no biotic _amp_?" Another stammered.

"As I told your boss," Paul said, finding strength now that his daughter's power had put some wonder in the men across him. "She was exposed to an extreme level of element zero in my wife's womb before she was born. It has… gifted her with this power. And it has left my wife crippled and sick. I'm sure you were informed of what I require in exchange if you are to… take her."

"Of course, sir," one was quick to reply. "We will have our finest doctors work on your wife day and night until she is cured of her ailment. ...for the girl, of course."

Paul's daughter lifted her big doe-like eyes to his and swiped more rain-_tears_-from her face. "Help mommy…?"

If it wasn't _for _the rain, she'd see his own tears. "Yes, sweety. You're going to help mommy. You're going to save her life." He raised a trembling fist to his mouth and held his breath before he broke into sobs.

"Sir, I assure you, no harm will come to the girl," a Cerberus man told him, stepping forth to fill the gap between them and raising a hand in, perhaps, some gesture of comfort. "And she is young enough that we can make her forget. Forget about you. Forget about your wife. She won't hurt inside. She won't ever even know who you were. If _you _can live with this… I assure you, so can she."

Paul's lip trembled and he had to turn from his daughter's face before her little nose wrinkled up again and shattered his heart. "Her name is-"

"We don't want to know her name," the man interjected. "We're only interested in her gift."

Paul turned on him. "No name? Well… wh-what will you call her?" An anger rose up to replaced his sorrow. "She's my baby girl! What are you going to _call _her!?"

"If she's as talented as you claim, and from what we just witnessed, she very likely is, she will be the first subject of a new initiative we at Cerberus are starting to advance humanity's position within this galactic turmoil our species finds itself in. She won't have a name. She'll simply be 'the subject', or, perhaps, 'subject zero'."

"Subject _zero_," Paul snapped. The thought of his sweet little baby girl without so much as a name to be called by made him want to rush forth and strike the man before him.

"Exposure to element zero at as an advanced age as your wife _will _be enough to take her life, sir. Of that, I assure you," the man said, perhaps sensing Paul's mind changing. "Your daughter will be looked at as a _freak _anywhere she goes because of what she can do, and when your wife is gone and _she _is all that remains to you, you'll come to resent her for it, and, in time, _hate_ her. Don't put yourself through that. Don't put _her_ through that. Give her to us. We will take good care of her. You tell your wife she was kidnapped, and you bear no responsibilities."

"Help mommy," his daughter repeated.

Paul pulled her little face against his own and sobbed into her hair, how sweet and soft and innocent it felt against him... for the last time. "I love you, Jennifer," he whispered into her ear. "I love you."

He stepped forth, handed her to the waiting arms of the man in the cloak, and stepped back. The man bowed, turned, and his group followed him quickly into the ship and out of the rain.

Paul watched them go from his pit of mud and rainwater, his knees threatening to buckle on him. When the ship lifted and Jen's eyes found his one final time, a brave little smile beneath them, as she sailed away, he lost the battle with his legs and dropped to the mud. He buried his face in his hands and doubled over, sobbing.

His wife lived.

He never saw his daughter again.


End file.
